. ..:: nFusion Nova IKS FTA Receiver ::.. .


Greetings :)


As a new owner of the nFusion Nova IKS FTA Receiver, I am just here to write a short review about it..  As you may or may not know, nFusion has gaining alot of popularity and buzz lately (this is how I had heard about it) as being one of the first receivers fixed during various ECM's, at times with it not even going down at all while other receivers have been affected to various degrees.


It comes in a nice compact little box; unfortunately I already have opened mine and made a mess of it so heres a shot of it from the internet:





I remember saying to myself "wow, this is a pretty small box" when I had it in my hands, and sure enough, the unit itself is one of the smallest FTA's I've seen lately (of course there are other small ones, but this is visibly smaller than the CoolSAT 7000 or ViewSAT Ultra that I have nearby.)


A list of features, from the box:

 • Mpeg-2 Digital and Full DVB
• Ethernet Port For Self-Updating via Internet ( full wireless support optional equipment required) connects to your home network for PVR capability
• Ultra-Fast Advanced EPG
• Simple Satellite Scan
• Fast Multi-Satellite Search
• Blind Search (Power Scan)
• Extended EPG and Program Reservation through EPG (Timer function)
• Tele-text Support (OSD and VBI Insertion)
• Channel Sorting by Alphabet, Transponder and CAS
• Channel Control by Delete, Skip, Lock, Move and Favorites.
• Last Channel Memory Function
• Total 4,000 Channels (+/-)
• TP CH auto update
• Xcrypt software support
• RGB Component Video Output
• RCA Composite Video Output
• S-Video Output
• SPDIF Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• DiseqC Control Version 1.0, 1.2 and USALS
• Powerful Channel Control by Favorites, Loc, Skip, Move and Channel Sorting by Alphabet, Transponder
• 10 Languages (OSG and Menu): English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Turkish, Arabic, Parsi
• Plasma Friendly ( No Burn to Plasma TVs)
• Parental Lock/ Installation Lock/ Receiver Lock
• Zoom-In Function LNB/TUNER

Now a list of even more technical specifications for the geeks.. (just kidding *smile*)

 • Input Frequency 950~2,150MHz
• RF Input level -65~-250dBm
• LNB Control DiSEqC 1.0 & 1.2
• LNB Power 13/18V (MAX, 400mA )
• LNB Tone Switch 22KHz + 2KHz ( 0.6Vp-p) • External RF Switch 0/12V(50mA
• DEMODULATOR
• WAVEFORM QSPK (SPCS,MCPC Capable
• Symbol Rate 2~31Mbps MEPG
• Transport Stream MEPG-ll
• Video MEPG-ll Main Profile/Main level
• Audio MEPG-ll Layer l & ll VIDEO
• CVBS 1Vp-p into 75 ohms
• Video Format 16:9 4:3
• Frequency Range 5Hz to 5MHz AUDIO
• Sample Frequency 32/44 1/48KHz
• Frequency Responce 20Hz~20KHz HI-FI Quality Digital Stereo
• Audio output 2V rms into 600 CONNECTORS
• LNB INPUT F-Type IEC 169 Female
• Loop F-Type IEC 169 Female
• TV ANT IN F-Type IEC 169 Female
• TV OUTPUT F-Type IEC 169 Female chan 2/3
• S-VIDEO • ETHERNET 10/100 (Internet auto update (Software upgradeable via INTERNET) or RS-232C cable )(Wireless using external equipment optional)
• RCA JACK CVBS AUDIO L/R 0/12V
• SPDIF OPTICAL
• Comp VIDEO Y Pb PR
• SERIAL PORT RS-232 D-TYPE APPLICATION SYSTEM
• PROCESSOR MIPS ( 120 Mhz )
• DRAM 16+2 Mbyte (faster than 32 Megs of SDRAM)
• LED DISPLAY 4 Digits
• GRAPHIC DISPLAY 720x576
• SUPPLY VOLTAGE Free voltage ( 100-240V AC 50/60Hz
• POWER ON/OFF Switch ( back / front)
• OPERATING TEMP -10 C +50 C

Phew.. Now that thats done, let me finally talk about the unit itself. Upon hooking it up for the first time and seeing the unit for the first time on the TV, I have to admit I was a little taken back by how... PLAIN it was.  This is putting it nicely.  The menu navigation and interface definitely leave something to be desired.  It is VERY boring and features no pretty pictures at all or even icons.  Everything is strictly text only and to be honest, it looks quite outdated.  Definitely in need of some serious touching up and eye-candy...  Some may argue that it does nothing for the functionality, but lets face it, we also judge with our eyes and not just strictly on the support.

Here is a photograph of the Antenna Config menu, for instance:



If you have ever seen a more recent receiver, like a CoolSAT 7000 or a ViewSAT Ultra you will understand what I'm saying when I say:  Boring.  Also I should note that at various times while navigating these Antenna Settings menus, I would encounter a visual glitch like some writing overlapping eachother, or a piece of the previous screen I was on would somehow make its way onto the current menu, or some out-of-place text somewhere on the interface.



Kind of basic, but functional, and I guess thats all that matters.  For the bad now, though.  I have experienced a problem with this receiver that I have not experienced with any of the other receivers in my house.  This nFusion does not like to play well with my Dish Pro LNBs+DP34 switch;  on certain H transponders it is failing to get a lock for some reason, and a scan of my 91west satellite is coming up about 100 channels short.  These transponders are absolutely fine on any other receiver I have in the house, and I have tested other receivers on the exact same input that this nFusion is using.  Their support forum hasn't been very helpful with assessing my problem just asking me to do things like check my quality levels which is silly because they have always been at 90%+ on any of my other 3 receivers in the house.  I'm going to have to say that this is a pretty generic response and does not address my problem at all.  To this day I cannot lock in some of those H transponders and am missing some of my favorite channels.  All I can conclude is that the nFusion team, who is Canadian based, has not done sufficient testing of Dish Pro equipment and have not yet perfected the DP switching techniques or frequency conversions..



While I am not a fan of the plain aspect of the menu's and other parts of the on-screen display, I have to admit I _do_ really like the EPG.  It may not be incredibly flashy but I do think the darker blue shade and navigation of the EPG is pretty sleek.  It does a pretty good job of not bogging down and getting overly slow at any point, even with the guide fully populated.  Another problem I experience on other receivers but not the nFusion is that various other units tend to "reboot" or "memory dump" if you surf their EPG's too fast once it's been fully populated...  My nFusion has never rebooted once. 

While we're on the topic of EPG population, I am absolutely blown away by how WELL the nFusion populates its guide.  As I said I own 3 other FTA's at the moment and have tried many others before, and this one populates by far the best of all of them.  Even after doing incredibly lengthy EPG downloads (Try the 9-day EPG download on the CoolSAT 7000... yikes!) on other receivers, I would always still have a fair amount of "No Informations" in the guide for certain channels and am very pleased to say that this EPG populates insanely well.  I cannot confirm if it downloads the guide information through the Ethernet port or what, but whatever it does, it's a hell of a job.



I have pretty discerning eyes when it comes to picture quality, and am always the first one to state my opinion on it when it comes to a receiver I've used..  The nFusion is about the same as most other FTA's..  It looks good, but is not the best I have ever seen (Gotta go with CS for that one).  Occasionally I have encountered a bit of pixellation or deinterlacing problems during live TV oddly enough, but it is a new receiver still and it has never bothered me since there is NO receiver out there without its fair share of problems.  They might want to look into some deblocking filters for their video codec, might help to clear up the macroblocks and make the receivers PQ be a little more special than the average.  Either way, it is acceptable.



Now, as you can see in the picture of the rear of the unit above..  This is where the unit becomes very unique from the rest of the bunch.  The nFusion has an Ethernet port so it can access your local network, and internet.  This is an incredible idea that I have always waited for, and wondered why other receivers always chose to go the Serial or USB route instead of ethernet.  With this port, you can do things like record live TV that you are watching to a mounted network share on your local network without the need ever for an external USB hard drive :)  This is convenient for many reasons, but most obvious, that you will never need to go out and buy an external USB enclosure/drive if you do not already own one, and also that you will never have to unhook your drive and manually lug it over to your PC just to copy your shows from the drive -- with this, you just record directly to the PC of your choice..  Very cool. 

Another reason for the ethernet port, which is genius, is for automatic updating from the internet of the receiver.  Thats right -- you don't even need to leave the couch when its time for new software on the receiver.  The receiver is automatically hooked up to the internet and can inform you when new software is ready, as well as download it for you all with a couple clicks of the remote.  VERY convenient and is very effective.  I have experimented with it many times and it works flawlessly. 

The final function of the ethernet port is for their heavily advertised "IKS" function.  IKS stands for Internet Key Sharing, and its purpose is for when the average receiver stops rolling new keys for instance, due to changes in the providers autoroll routine, this receiver can poll the IKS server for the latest information and your receiver will keep on working without a hitch (while other receivers need to wait for their teams to put out software upgrades).  This has been tried and tested for nFusion through the last few ECM's now, at the time of this writing.  They have consistently been one of the first receivers up, if even going down at all, while other major receiver brands have taken quite a while longer.  I have to admit that the support from their team has been pretty tremendous when it comes to making sure your TV still works.  Very impressive.  Oh, and, yes you can disable the IKS feature on the receiver if you're one of those paranoid people worried about sending FTA queries through the internet ;)




My final thoughts, for the end of this long winded rant, is that it is a very capable receiver with a very bright future.  However, like any receiver you will try, it is certainly not without its flaws.  The most major flaw being my issue with the Dish Pro equipment that is still unresolved.  Other minor quirks include things like minor visual glitches at rare occasions, while using the menus or during live TV.  But there is ALOT good about it, and even unique and revolutionary to nFusion and nobody else.  Auto-updating is a seriously excellent idea and function that anybody can appreciate; especially if your like me and have to set friends who know nothing about satellite up with receivers of their own.  Everybody can relate to the pain-in-the-ass it is when you gotta drive across town to a buddies house to fix his FTA just because he's too stupid to do it himself :P

Hopefully this will answer some questions or at least prepare you for the good times you will have in store if you own one of these receivers.  I am happy with it but it also leaves alot to be desired.  I think the main thing it needs is more time, and for its support team to keep on the ball as they have been so far.  Great job, keep up the good work, and let me know when it actually works properly with Dish Pro equipment.

cheers and happy FTAing